Pushing Sitecore to the limits and beyond

Sitecore Workflow commands not being shown in the ribbon or gutter.

Requirement

The customer required that when an item is in a a specific workflow state, the item cannot be edited.

Sitecore has a special security permission to achieve this Workflow State Write, if you set this to deny on the relevant workflow item, the item will become readonly whilst in that state. Perfect I thought, of course you have to ensured that the user has the Workflow Command Execute permission.

Problem

Unfortunately in Sitecore 8.1.0.151207, if you do not have write access to the item, the workflow commands are not shown in the ribbon and the workflow gutter icon is not visible either.

Therefore, the user cannot approve or reject the item, unless they are an administrator!

Solution

However, if you want to display workflow commands in the ribbon even if workflow write access is denied you can follow the following steps: